Apple TV 8K May Never Ship. 8K TV Might Actually Fail in the Market

• Okay, you’ve been happily enjoying your 4K/UHD TV and Apple TV 4K for awhile now. Or you’re shopping for the duo for the holidays. So what should you make of the 8K TV fuss? The answer is: not much.

Apple TV 4K. Maybe the end of an era.

Customers tend to keep their TVs for a long time, and just about no one who’s into 4K nowadays is interested in 8K. It’s just a technology demo and publicity stunt. Fodder for alluring articles. The 8K technology may even fall into the graveyard of 3D and curved TV displays. But if you’d like to stay informed, all the while amusing yourself, here’s a great wrap-up. “Hello, 8K displays: TV’s next must-have feature isn’t really a must-have.”

How will you suspect when it’s time to spring? Optimistically? Maybe if Apple ::cough:: ships the Apple TV 8K and 50 percent of Netflix is in 8K/Dolby Vision. Then you’ll know 8K is for real. I estimate 2023. And quite possibly never. The whole 8K thing might just fail in the market. Like 3D. Nothing to see here.

When a technology appears to be on the verge of failing, it’s a sure sign something totally unexpected will come along to take its place. The TV industry is ever on the lookout.

Apple’s September 12 Event

• Apple’s fall iPhone event is September 12th. Odds are it’ll include an Apple Watch Series 4 roll out as well. It’s time to get briefed.

More Debris

• Few companies can protect your credit card online. Apple, Amazon, and Google do a pretty good job. Others have failed miserably. Just like the discredited simple username/password combo, it’s probably time for the industry to figure out a way to no longer keep your credit card number on permanent file. There has to be a better way. The convenience of a stored card number is now too high a price to pay. Case in point: “British Airways app and website hack exposes full card details of 380,000 customers.”

• Google is a company that manages to, depressingly, convolute its very high technical skills with long term, hidden agenda. These two articles will fill you in on something important Google is doing with its Chrome browser. Dropping “www” from the address bar. And the very suspicious AMP project.

This is abuse of power by Google. It’s tiresome. I’m sticking with Safari.

• Any sufficiently advanced technology is not only indistinguishable from magic, but can also be misused for unintended consequences. For example, have you ever thought about Facebook as a weapon? Others have.

Particle Debris is a generally a mix of John Martellaro’s observations and opinions about a standout event or article of the week (preamble on page one) followed on page two by a discussion of articles that didn’t make the TMO headlines, the technical news debris. The column is published most every Friday except for holiday weeks.

Seems to me that it depends on whether 8K becomes a “thing” in the market.
If people start stampeding to get 8K TVs in the next 3-4 years for Xmas, then they will need 8K devices to go along with those big TV’s.
Apple TV 8k could become one of those devices if such were the case.

However, perhaps 8K will stay a niche device in which case there will be other players who fill the void and make little profit. Not certain how many need a 75″ or 90″ display in their home.

I don’t need one, but it would be nifty.

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4 months ago

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Lee Dronick

#30213

Not certain how many need a 75″ or 90″ display in their home.

My neighbor has what can best be described as a drive-in movie theater screen in his living room.

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4 months ago

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Ned

#30199

The success/failure will probably be linked to peoples’ egos. Most people don’t have an annual eye exam and have no reference to their visual accuity other than “I can see fine.” I wear glasses and have regular checkups. Took the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test with a Print pressman and a QA manager and scored 100% with their scores of – 13 and -30. They asked me, “You can see the difference in those colors?” I have 4K, 1080 and 720 TVs and can see the difference in 720 vs. 1080. It’s very close on 1080 vs. 4K. I won’t bother… Read more »

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4 months ago

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John Kheit

#30250

You guys are very wrong. I have a 65″ 4k tv and you can totally tell the difference when playing video games. But here is where you may be right with regard to TV in general, but wrong with monitors. Having a retina retina 55″ display monitor for your computer will be life changing. Photographers will be able to see 20MP+ photos in full glory. You’ll have more desk real estate. So there is zero doubt 8K is great for monitors. But if the display makers do this for monitors, the efficiency of scale means this WILL happen for TVs… Read more »

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4 months ago

Member

wab95

#30189

John: Just a quick comment about Google, its new browser feature potentially obscuring its subdomain, AMP, through which all of its content may increasingly be funnelled, and what AMP might potentially mean for security, and the further nonconsensual ceding of unmonitored control of our data to that part of the private sector that profits from its use. For those concerned about privacy invasion, surveillance and monitoring primarily by state actors, unauthorised data access and data theft, not to mention state sponsored information campaigns that attempt to surreptiously shape public opinion and behaviour, it should provide cold comfort that a private… Read more »

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4 months ago

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francini@mac.com

#30152

8K resolution and the wall space necessary for it forcibly reminds me of a song by the ever-prescient Weird Al Yankovic: “Frank’s 2000-inch TV”.

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4 months ago

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John Kheit

#30132

I disagree. 8K TV totally will happen. If only for the reason that 8K huge 55 inch monitors will be a “thing“. People will love having 33+ megapixel displays that are massive, and can show multi pages. If apple doesn’t produce an 8k Apple TV, it may be more of an artifact of the horrible management by Tim Cook and his “deep pipeline“ of product neglect.

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4 months ago

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joe_u

#30131

The scale and size of the display that is required to support 8K is probably somewhere around 85 to 90 inches. Anything smaller would not benifit from 8K resolution. The issue will be how many people have enough free wall space for a 90 inch display plus the bandwidth needed from your ISP to deliver the 8K content. The Xfinity 2TB monthly data cap will need to be increased in order to support the delivery of 8K content.

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4 months ago

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eddychik

#30151

Exactly this. 4K may be perfect 60 to 70″ and below. I think somewhere between 80 to 100″ it will fall behind a little bit. But we don’t need 8K to get that improvement, why cant we have 5K instead? Which should fit everything up to 120″. Then it is all colouring and other PQ improvement like Dolby Vision.

I think it make sense for 8K to do capturing, but 8K viewing doesn’t make any sense and it is waste of computing resources and bandwidth.

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4 months ago

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geoduck

#30130

I am leaning toward the Sep 12 event being all iOS. iPhone, iPad, AppleWatch. Then I would think they will have another event in a couple of weeks for a new MacMini, MacBook Air, and possibly some other bumps to MacBooks. There’s just too much for one event. 8k may come eventually, but not this year. Like you said 2023 maybe. We got a new TV at the beginning of the year. We got a great price on a 55″ with Roku built in. Best Buy was closing out the 1080 models and replacing them with 4k. I just didn’t… Read more »

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4 months ago

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Lee Dronick

#30129

Has 4k been a success? I don’t even have 2k

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4 months ago

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CudaBoy

#30125

8k TV will fail?? Can I put you on record for that? Boy are you wrong as it’s already here, period. And, you are dead wrong comparing 8k to 3D – that is just not an accurate comparison because 3D is a gimmick but higher resolution and more accurate color gamut will NEVER stop improving. All major Cam co.s make 8k cams.8k cams today are used mostly for downsampling to better 4k but by 2022 it will common with consumers. This same MacOb website poo-poo’d 4k not that long ago – if you do your research you will see. You… Read more »